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Art and Act
An exploration of causes in history, drawing its examples from the fields of painting and architecture. Using the lives and works of three artists, this book explains how character, craft and culture together determined how each of them created what he did.
320 pages, Paperback
First published September 28, 1980
26 people want to read
About the author
Peter Gay
151 books156 followersPeter Joachim Gay was a German-American historian, educator, and author. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers (1997–2003). He received the American Historical Association's (AHA) Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2004. He authored over 25 books, including The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, a two-volume award winner; Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (1968); and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988).
Gay was born in Berlin in 1923, left Germany in 1939 and emigrated, via Cuba, to the United States in 1941. From 1948 to 1955 he was a political science professor at Columbia University, and then a history professor from 1955 to 1969. He left Columbia in 1969 to join Yale University's History Department as Professor of Comparative and Intellectual European History and was named Sterling Professor of History in 1984.
Gay was the interim editor of The American Scholar after the death of Hiram Haydn in 1973 and served on that magazine's editorial board for many years. Sander L. Gilman, a literary historian at Emory University, called Gay "one of the major American historians of European thought, period".
Gay was born in Berlin in 1923, left Germany in 1939 and emigrated, via Cuba, to the United States in 1941. From 1948 to 1955 he was a political science professor at Columbia University, and then a history professor from 1955 to 1969. He left Columbia in 1969 to join Yale University's History Department as Professor of Comparative and Intellectual European History and was named Sterling Professor of History in 1984.
Gay was the interim editor of The American Scholar after the death of Hiram Haydn in 1973 and served on that magazine's editorial board for many years. Sander L. Gilman, a literary historian at Emory University, called Gay "one of the major American historians of European thought, period".
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 18, 2013
The recurrent presence of this book in many bibliographies among respected scholarships convinced me to invest: I was, from the title probably, expecting some theoretical considerations concerning the blurring of art and life within the context of modernism:
I was bitterly disappointed. The introduction sounds very promising: Gay is well respected historian and promises his reader to outline, in this book, a methodology focused on 'causal analysis' he understands to circumvent the accusations against 'grand-narratives' that I imagine were emerging at the time of his writing. In other words, I was somewhat expecting an elegant exercise in showing how the grasp of the origins rather than the ends of events is to be provide a 'non-teleological' framework.
There was no such things: his method is more of a set of categories with which to inquire or conceptualize a phenomenon, on to axis: how it relates to the general 'cultural' background of the events, how it relates to the particular practices of individuals as part of their trade or pursuits, and last how it impacts on the private lives. All aspects can be understood either subjectively or objectively. That's as good a framework as an other, but hardly revolutionize the field or discredit historical materialism as he seems eager to do.
Now as to the three case studies to which he employs himself to exemplify his strategy, we start with an essay I found enjoyable, maybe because I was not particularly familiar with its focus: Manet. We get a quick outline of the contemporary Parisian society and an interesting characterization, contrasting the painter's daring in terms of his art, with his conservatism in terms of his life. I am not knowledgeable enough on the question to judge of his interpretation but it would certainly open some interesting doors, which at any rate Gay does not enter. Second comes Gropius, whom he agreeably places back in the context of the Werkbund and the German rationalizing of architecture. His focus on the early years rather than the better known and celebrated Bauhaus is interesting, but also I suspect, betrays his relatively conservative project to de-mystify the Avant-Garde, an interesting angle, but which unfortunately turns sour when he engages with his third 'patient': Mondrian. I suppose as much as Gropius, Mondrian could benefit from the critical overview Gay attempts to apply, but here his approach simply does not do it for me; In short, Peter Gay dismisses all of Mondrian's writing as a huge pile of bull (and I assume his opinion of most of avant-garde theories to be of same ilk) - especially his 'spiritual' interest, which he goes to great lengths to deride, showing both the lack of research he had done on theosophy, and the fantasies he entertained about abstraction. The mumbo-jumbo of post-symbolist occultism in fact acts a fig-leaf inefficiently covering up the real source of Mondrian's obnoxious rectangles: his repressed sexuality! Despite having warned us against the dangers of psychohistory in his introduction, here we find the apex of Gay's analysis. Because of his inability to face women (no mention of the 'Dancing Madonna' though) Mondrian was compelled to reflect in his orthogonal compositions, the ossified bachelor lifestyle that was his quotidian. So all in all, modernist rationalism seems to arise from the habits of sexual repression. One is left to wonder whether he imagined that Malevitch's black square was working through his Oedipus?
So is there anything to save? Well yes, two things very much related. First, the book is quite well illustrated, with a clear effort to display the works the author refers to, which even in our era of the internet, even the prints are smallish and in black and white, makes any pictorial analysis a good deal more engaging and any lecture a whole lot more enjoyable. And as those prints take up some space, despite the shortcomings I referred to above, it is also very quick to read: one essay at a time, you will be done before you're started. And let's be honest, that will also be a bit of a relief.
All in all who should get this book? Well it's a readable introduction to the field, an it certainly diverge in its unsympathetic portraiture of the avant-garde, as being relatively dull and contrived, from the many more recent surveys who tend to divinize those individuals. But do make sure you go and explore other perspectives on the question.
I was bitterly disappointed. The introduction sounds very promising: Gay is well respected historian and promises his reader to outline, in this book, a methodology focused on 'causal analysis' he understands to circumvent the accusations against 'grand-narratives' that I imagine were emerging at the time of his writing. In other words, I was somewhat expecting an elegant exercise in showing how the grasp of the origins rather than the ends of events is to be provide a 'non-teleological' framework.
There was no such things: his method is more of a set of categories with which to inquire or conceptualize a phenomenon, on to axis: how it relates to the general 'cultural' background of the events, how it relates to the particular practices of individuals as part of their trade or pursuits, and last how it impacts on the private lives. All aspects can be understood either subjectively or objectively. That's as good a framework as an other, but hardly revolutionize the field or discredit historical materialism as he seems eager to do.
Now as to the three case studies to which he employs himself to exemplify his strategy, we start with an essay I found enjoyable, maybe because I was not particularly familiar with its focus: Manet. We get a quick outline of the contemporary Parisian society and an interesting characterization, contrasting the painter's daring in terms of his art, with his conservatism in terms of his life. I am not knowledgeable enough on the question to judge of his interpretation but it would certainly open some interesting doors, which at any rate Gay does not enter. Second comes Gropius, whom he agreeably places back in the context of the Werkbund and the German rationalizing of architecture. His focus on the early years rather than the better known and celebrated Bauhaus is interesting, but also I suspect, betrays his relatively conservative project to de-mystify the Avant-Garde, an interesting angle, but which unfortunately turns sour when he engages with his third 'patient': Mondrian. I suppose as much as Gropius, Mondrian could benefit from the critical overview Gay attempts to apply, but here his approach simply does not do it for me; In short, Peter Gay dismisses all of Mondrian's writing as a huge pile of bull (and I assume his opinion of most of avant-garde theories to be of same ilk) - especially his 'spiritual' interest, which he goes to great lengths to deride, showing both the lack of research he had done on theosophy, and the fantasies he entertained about abstraction. The mumbo-jumbo of post-symbolist occultism in fact acts a fig-leaf inefficiently covering up the real source of Mondrian's obnoxious rectangles: his repressed sexuality! Despite having warned us against the dangers of psychohistory in his introduction, here we find the apex of Gay's analysis. Because of his inability to face women (no mention of the 'Dancing Madonna' though) Mondrian was compelled to reflect in his orthogonal compositions, the ossified bachelor lifestyle that was his quotidian. So all in all, modernist rationalism seems to arise from the habits of sexual repression. One is left to wonder whether he imagined that Malevitch's black square was working through his Oedipus?
So is there anything to save? Well yes, two things very much related. First, the book is quite well illustrated, with a clear effort to display the works the author refers to, which even in our era of the internet, even the prints are smallish and in black and white, makes any pictorial analysis a good deal more engaging and any lecture a whole lot more enjoyable. And as those prints take up some space, despite the shortcomings I referred to above, it is also very quick to read: one essay at a time, you will be done before you're started. And let's be honest, that will also be a bit of a relief.
All in all who should get this book? Well it's a readable introduction to the field, an it certainly diverge in its unsympathetic portraiture of the avant-garde, as being relatively dull and contrived, from the many more recent surveys who tend to divinize those individuals. But do make sure you go and explore other perspectives on the question.
Displaying 1 of 1 review